


Even The Oceans Begin to Feel Young

by Ghandilove (Punica_granatum)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Kira-centric, Minor Scott McCall/Malia Tate, Nobody stays dead, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-07
Updated: 2016-12-07
Packaged: 2018-09-07 03:48:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8781757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Punica_granatum/pseuds/Ghandilove
Summary: Kira wonders if this is to be her life. Watching the people she loves die over and over and over again.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know if I should tag for anything else. Nobody stays dead. And all death happens off screen.

When Kira returns from the desert it’s been years.

Decades really.

Her father has long since passed and her mother, well she doesn't have long left. Destroying her tails had cost her. Kira knows the only reason that she lasted this long was because she didn't want her daughter to come back to an empty house.

When she returns they sit at opposite ends of the table, the weight of the years stretched out between them. Looking at her mother’s face, deeply lined with grief, Kira wonders if this is why her mother kept the truth from her for so long.

Wonders if her mother would have wished for her to be human.

_Is this what it means to be Kitsune?_

 ~ 

Of her friends, Malia is the only one left living. The others dead before their years were up, trying to save the world.

Kira stands at the edge of the graveyard and watches as Malia places flowers onto Scott's grave. Her hair is starting to grey now, her face bearing the same lines of grief Kira sees on her mother. This year would have been their thirtieth wedding anniversary.

The wind whirls around Kira, strands of hairs whipping against her face. As the fall leaves crackle against her feet she imagines she can smell the decay in the air.

She wants to go to Malia, to comfort her, to say I'm sorry.

Sorry she took so long, sorry she wasn't here.

Wasn’t here for all the fighting.

For all the battles hard won and hard lost.

For all the funerals.

But it's been years and years and years and after all this time Kira is no more than a ghost.

Just another face found only in photographs. Just like all the rest.

Instead she watches from the shadows and thinks _: I've got centuries left of this._

~

When her mother passes she stays just long enough to see her buried. Just long enough to visit all the graves one last time. Just long enough to say goodbye before she puts Beacon Hills behind her for good.

After that she just drifts.

A single piece of driftwood lost to the waves of time.

~

She doesn’t stay in any one place for very long.  Changes her name and her clothes and her life.

She stares up at the skies and wonders if she’ll live long enough to watch the stars die. After a while even the oceans begin to feel young.

She travels the world and tries to ignore the empty spaces that seem to follow her wherever she goes.

She has centuries. Eventually she’ll get it right.

~

It feels like it’s been forever when it happens but she knows it’s only been a few decades.

A few decades until Kira sees a child with dark hair pulled back into frizzy pigtails.

Her breath catches in her chest. Her mother never told her about this.

Its _Allison_.

Of course that’s not her name this time around but Kira knows the truth. She knows it with complete and utter conviction. Knows it down to each and every last inch of her soul.

Kira quietly buys a house on the edge of town and settles in as she begins to feel hope again.

She may as well keep watch.

After all she does have centuries.

~

In this life Allison lives to twenty-two, killed when her car hits black ice.

When Kira hears the news the only thing she can hear is Lydia screaming.

Kira wonders if this is to be her life.

Watching the people she loves die over and over and over again.

~

She moves on.

The years pass.

They keep coming.

~

One after another they appear.

_-Lydia, Scott, Stiles_

Each time Kira settles in to keep watch.

    - _Malia, Cora, Derek_

As the years pass she gets better at finding them.

_-Erica, Boyd, Isaac_

At protecting them.

_-Hayden, Liam, Mason_

At saving them.

_-Allison_

~

She doesn’t always succeed.

But she gets stronger and faster and smarter.

Something tells her she needs to be.

She thinks it might be that blasted tree.

~

They say all roads lead to Rome or was it all roads lead back to home?

She’s lost track of the years and nothing remains.

Nothing except the Nemeton, that is.

She’s the first one back.

She settles in and waits.

~

She watches them all come.

Scott with his wide smiles and soft eyes, Stiles ever by his side.

Allison with her quiet conviction, Lydia her gentle courage.

Malia and her fierce heart.

She watches them.

Derek, Cora, and Laura a family again.

Isaac, Erica, and Boyd no longer lost.

Hayden, Liam, Mason young again, oh so _young._

_Was she ever that young?_

She watches them find each other.

~

They find her too.

She stops watching.

~

This time she’s ready.

This time she’s happy for her years.

Because this time?

This time she saves them.

~

Her smiles come easier now as the years fall off her shoulders. She looks up at the skies and knows peace.

The oceans begin to feel old again and she sighs with relief.

The years pass by and Kira is too busy to notice. Too busy with the graduations, and the weddings and the births. With the birthdays and the holidays and the anniversaries.

Too busy watching her friends line their faces with laughter.

With all the happy things they missed the first time around.

This time they all live long lives free from sorrow and grief.

This time Kira is right there with them.

When the first grave is dug and the first coffin is lowered deep, she does not weep.

Kira knows she will see them again.

After all she is Kitsune.

And Kitsune have centuries.


End file.
